


on divinity

by moonbeatblues



Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, and elects are the chosen pilots of divines, crash course if you don't know friends at the table:, divines are gods but also machines, edit: changed the summary, hallows are mechs blessed by divines, partizan au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23875753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: “Do you think a Divine can be selfish?”Caduceus pauses a moment and frowns, then keeps winding the bandage around Beau’s arm, around and then over her shoulder and back again. The room smells clean, sharp, herbs and alcohol.“I think they’re as selfish as anything can ever be. They are their goals, their desired outcome. Furthering those is furthering themselves. The question is not whether it’s selfish, but what you think about things that are selfish.”(a partizan au)
Relationships: Jester Lavorre & The Traveler, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672555
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	on divinity

**Author's Note:**

> this is. slightly left of mech au, but i've been listening to partizan a lot, okay? partizan GOOD

“Do you think a Divine can be selfish?”

Caduceus pauses a moment and frowns, then keeps winding the bandage around Beau’s arm, around and then over her shoulder and back again. The room smells clean, sharp, herbs and alcohol.

“I think they’re as selfish as anything can ever be. They are their goals, their desired outcome. Furthering those is furthering themselves. The question is not whether it’s selfish, but what you think about things that are selfish.”

“Huh. You thinkin’ about it, too, then?”

“Fjord is curious. I need to know what I think before I can help him decide what he thinks.”

“Didn’t know Divines made Hallows for people still questioning.”

“Oh, of course! The Mother loves a work in progress.”

Caduceus cuts the end of the bandage roll neatly and stands back, smiling faintly. “You should be more careful.”

“Easy for you to say. The Grove takes hits like a champ. Besides, I’ve usually got Jes, but she’s. Busy. Thinkin’ stuff over.”

Caduceus blinks, and gets it.

“The Traveler isn’t a Divine, Beau.”

“I know.”

“He’s selfish, though. It’s not mutually exclusive.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, he’s got a purpose, too, I just worry.”

“No.” His voice loses that soft edge. “He’s the wrong kind of selfish.”

Her throat winds shut, a little. “Yeah, huh?”

“It’s not having the purpose, it’s how you go about it. The Mother asked me to help her fulfill hers.”

“And Jester?”

“He didn’t tell her what it is, when he asked.”

“You think it’s something bad?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think he knows what it is, either.”

—

“So, uh, do we have to do it? The Hallow thing, I mean.”

Dairon raises an eyebrow.

“I do not usually hear receiving the blessing of a Divine described as a chore, Beauregard. But no.”

“Isn’t that kind of the point, though? Of being an Expositor? That we know things other people don’t?”

“Are you being obtuse on purpose?”

She is. “No.”

Dairon sighs. “You know better than anyone an Expositor is about personal capability. You learned Dwarvish in two months. Don’t sell yourself short.”

She’s still iffy, she doesn’t tell Dairon, there’s this special future tense in Halfling she picked up from Veth that translates poorly into Common and even worse into Dwarvish but that she keeps slipping into anyway.

“What’s it like?” she says instead. “Getting Hallowed, or whatever.”

“I don’t know,” Dairon says, and tilts her head up to the big round window cut right into the ceiling. “I have not done it.”

“Oh,” Beau says, following her gaze, and then, “You think it’s gonna rain?”

“That is what I am trying to ascertain. If I were blessed by Ioun, I suppose I would know already, from the motion of clouds.”

“But?”

“But,” and she stands, and offers a hand to Beauregard. “It seems I shall have to go and see how the air outside smells for myself. What a shame.”

Beau takes her hand and thinks of the sketchbook Jester had loaned her, long since filled up. She thinks of meeting that smuggler and stumbling through a conversation.

(“Pretty good,” she says, and resumes braiding the strands of her beard caught in her fingers. “Except for the ‘if either shall pass’ thing. Sound like a halfling.”

 _Pretty good,_ she thinks, pride glowing raw and warm in her chest.

“ _Beau_ ,” Jester says, voice fluffed with surprise, when she rejoins the group, “I didn’t know you spoke Dwarvish.”

She shrugs. “Just picked it up.”

“It’s not because of _Keg_ , is it?” Jester asks, sounding more teasing than she manages to look. Ahead, Fjord is already frowning back at them, now they’re starting to flag behind.

“No, uh,” she scratches at the back of her neck, where it’s gone a little cold and prickly, “I never even heard her speak it. Just thought it’d come in handy.”

“Ja, it did, Beauregard,” Caleb says from further ahead. “She did not even mark us up for the parts. We seem almost respectable.”

Jester loops her arm in Beau’s, then. “Yeah, and it’s sexy, too!”

She lets Jester drag her forward, eyes trained fastidiously where the soft round of Jester’s cheek is flushed faintly purple, like it had been bright and violent earlier and been fading ever since. “Think so?”)

“Yeah,” she says, “a shame,” and doesn’t mean it at all.

—

“Hey.”

“Hey, Jes. Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

She stalls a moment longer, though.

The hull of The Traveler is sleek, in a malleable sort of way. Like a river. _What are you_ , she thinks, _do you even know?_ And then she ducks her head and steps inside.

“Oh, that’s where all the blankets went.”

—

“I just wanted to feel close to him, you know?”

Jester put glow-in-the-dark stickers on the inside of The Traveler ages ago, and now they stretch out in the mostly-darkness of the cockpit like a tiny, green-tinted night sky.

“I almost wish he didn’t tell me.”

“It's better that you know,” Beau says, but Jester had cried enough that she isn’t quite sure. _It’s better that we know._

“Am I an Elect, do you think?”

Jester sounds afraid. She thinks of Caduceus and Yasha and thinks that _afraid_ is not what a divine should make its Elect be. Not that she knows, you know, they don’t really know any Elects, but call it personal capability, she thinks she figured it out alright all on her own.

“No.”

Jester sniffles a little. “Oh.” She shuffles closer in the puddle of blankets. “Remember how I told my momma The Traveler was a Hallow?”

Beau whistles breath in through her teeth. “Yeah.”

Jester laughs, a wet, teary sound. “That was pretty stupid, huh?”

The floor of The Traveler feels cold, almost apologetic under the sheets.

Beau turns to look at her. “No, I think you were right.”

Jester frowns. “How—“

“It’s you, I think. I dunno if it works like that, but if anyone’s the Divine, Jes, it’s you.”

Jester says nothing for a long moment. A few lights blink on and off further ahead, by the controls. In the faint glow of the stickers Beau can see her eyes get wide.

“Beau?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Um. Yeah.”

Jester’s mouth doesn’t feel like the radiant core of divine purpose itself. Her teeth are sharp, and they nick Beau’s lip, and they have to stop kissing after only a little while so Beau can stop the bleeding.

It’s good, though. Really good. Jester kisses her again, close-mouthed and careful, and it tastes a little like blood but it feels a lot like a blessing. Not like a god gives a follower, but like one person gives another.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! come say hello and also listen to partizan!!


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